Confessions of a displaced, pre-1968 Democrat.

05/04/2014

When it comes to protecting the well-being of labor, the Obama Administration is badly disjointed, and two recent topics underscore the haphazard approach—the minimum wage and Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade negotiations.

The Administration wants to raise the minimum wage to over ten dollars an hour, up from its current $7.25. Republicans in Congress voted the proposal down on the usual free market grounds, although I’m not sure legislation saying that anyone who works full-time should make $20,000 a year is really creeping socialism. In fact, $20K is still pretty bare bones.

A post run here on Blue Dog Reaganite detailed how large corporations have paid their people the minimum wage and then actually provided training for them on how to get welfare benefits. It’s time to stop this sort of corporate freeloading. And if a business can’t pay someone $20,000 a year—or pay a part-timer $10,000 a year, then maybe they should step aside and let someone else take their place in the market.

To keep a long story short, I think Obama is correct on the minimum wage.

But having wage laws presumes there are jobs for these laws to apply, and the TPP approach is a walking disaster. The negotiations are about creating an 11-nation free trade zone with countries on the other side of the Pacific, including China. Obama has not pushed for a ban on currency manipulation, a practice countries—most notoriously China—use to make their goods cheaper aboard, while not hurting the standard of living at home.

China’s currency manipulation has already resulted in an undercutting of America’s domestic workforce. What good does it to do to give someone a guarantee of ten bucks an hour, then turn around and negotiate a massive trade deal that allows shady practices to force that same person out of work?

I’m sorry, but you don’t get to pursue this kind of disjointed approach to labor, and then turn around and consider yourself a wonderfully compassionate person for pushing for an extension of unemployment benefits. Not when your global trade policies are a big part of the problem.

Fortunately there are voices---Democratic voices who might actually have influence in how the TPP looks at the end—that are speaking out against this. Charles Schumer, Debbie Stabenow and Sherrod Brown, liberal senators for New York, Michigan and Ohio respectively, have all taken the Administration to task publicly and said bluntly that they don’t see TPP passing without protection from currency manipulation.

I would like to believe they’re right, but I’ve been let down too many times before. A Democratic Congress passed a similar sellout with the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) back in 1993. A portion of the Democratic Party held firm, but others didn’t want to embarrass a president of their own party (Bill Clinton) and Republicans predictably fell in lockstep with a deal that benefitted corporate America.

It’s time to put policy above partisanship and either shut down the TPP negotiations or at least make sure they ban currency manipulation. Otherwise, ideas about the minimum wage might be fine and good, but they’ll amount to tossing a bread crumb to American labor while shipping the feast abroad.

04/23/2014

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him: and without him was made nothing that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.

There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.This man came for a witness, to give testimony of the light, that all men might believe through him. He was not the light, but was to give testimony of the light. That was the true light, which enlighteneth every man that cometh into this world. He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not.

He came unto his own, and his own received him not. But as many as received him, he gave them power to be made the sons of God, to them that believe in his name.Who are born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. (Opening of John’s Gospel)

We’ve just come off of Easter Sunday, when Christians around the world celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. We’re looking ahead to Divine Mercy Sunday this weekend, a feast of the Catholic Church celebrating the revelations Christ Himself gave to a Polish nun, St. Faustina Kowalska, promising His unfathomable mercy, for all who will ask for it.

It seems like now is an appropriate time then, for Blue Dog Reaganite to give a concise answer to the question of why we believe what we do. While political questions are this blog’s prime focus, you ultimately can’t separate religious convictions from one’s politics. What one believes ends up having ripple effects that spill into every question in the public sphere.

I believe in the Catholic Church. In a nutshell, here’s why…

*I believe Jesus Christ rose from the dead. The disciples who followed the Nazarean carpenter were notoriously weak at key moments in Jesus’ ministry. Peter denied him three times. All of them fled when Jesus was arrested, tried and crucified.

Yet, after the period of time when Christians believe He rose from the dead, the disciples were transformed into men courageous enough to go to martyrdom.

What changed them? What gave them the complete conviction that the preacher they had followed indeed was the Son of God? I say it’s that He really did rise from the dead.

*I further believe that Jesus Christ gave Peter the keys to the kingdom, and specifically promised that Peter was the Rock on which Jesus would build his Church. That church is the Catholic Church, whose papal succession can be traced in an unbroken line back to Peter, and whose apostolic succession of bishops can be traced to the other disciples.

This Church carries on Christ’s promise to be with all of us to the end of age, as the dispenser of the sacraments—His healing touch—and as the custodian of the doctrine of faith and the moral code that God wants all to follow.

Even secular historians will acknowledge the Holy Bible is accurate when it comes to reporting historical facts. Though they might take issue with the story of Christ rising from the dead, the Scriptures are a reliable historical barometer of the public ministry of Jesus of Nazareth.

Therefore, we can conclude that Jesus really said the things attributed to him, one of which was that He would build a Church. The early period of Christianity, after the Resurrection and Ascension, was marked by disciples and new converts who believed in things such as the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, in a hierarchical priesthood and in deferring to Rome. All things that mark the Catholic Church today.

We can further conclude that Jesus was one of three things—Lord, liar or lunatic. He was not simply a good man who said some productive things, and then died a normal death. We conclude this because no ordinary good man would make the claims that he made---that He would come on the clouds in glory, that He was the fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecies, that He would rise again on the third day. If we saw a street preacher today make those same claims, the only thing we would wonder about is if they were a malicious liar, or simply nuts.

But we don’t believe either about Jesus of Nazareth. And if that’s the case, there’s only one option left—that he was the Lord of all creation.

The salvific work of Jesus Christ today continues in the Catholic Church, After the first four centuries of Christianity, the Church established the canon of books that we recognize today as the Bible. The Church feeds us His Body and Blood in Holy Communion and imparts His mercy in the sacrament of confession. In a world of confusion, His Church provides the certitude of what is to be believed and how life is to be lived.

That’s the short version of why I believe.

But there are also many other things which Jesus did; which, if they were written every one, the world itself, I think, would not be able to contain the books that should be written (Close of John’s Gospel)

04/13/2014

I have to admit I was surprised when I saw the issue of equal pay for equal work was back in the news—the law that a woman doing the same job as a man must be compensated the same amount. I thought this was a settled issue. But apparently not. The vehicle is the Paycheck Fairness Act, being pushed by congressional Democrats and opposed—at least in large part—by Republicans. I think the Democrats are right on this one, although I want to start with some reservations…

*First off, I almost feel guilty about taking up what’s seen as a pro-woman stance. Not because I think there’s anything wrong with it. But because whenever I see a guy going on some crusade for women’s rights, I generally assume this is a guy with an ulterior agenda. Do I need to spell it out? Okay, I will—I assume that guys who get on huge crusades for women’s rights are looking to get someone into bed. The late Teddy Kennedy and Bill Clinton are my first pieces of evidence.

And look, I’m not innocent myself. My favorite actress, Stana Katic, who plays Detective Kate Beckett on the TV series Castle every Monday night (and masterfully played Simone Renoir in The Curse of the Judas Chalice) tweeted in favor of it and I find Stana to be considerably attractive (especially when she drops a Russian accent). So, in short, I’m often skeptical of the male ability to reason above the waist when it comes to issues like this.

But it doesn’t mean we can’t give it an honest try. Now frankly, I don’t see how anyone argues against equal pay for equal work, purely as a matter of justice. Here are the legitimate points that I have heard raised against the Paycheck Fairness Act, followed by why I don’t find them persuasive arguments…

*This bill is not about equal pay per se. It’s about how the means an employer can use to defend themselves and prove non-discrimination. Current law allows “any factor other than sex” to be used. The proposed bill would limit an employer defense to “bona fide factors, such as education, training, or experience.”

*The stats cited by the Obama White House say women are paid 77 cents to every dollar for a man. Critics, including the liberal Washington Post say this is more in the neighborhood of 84-85 cents.

*The Obama White House is hypocritical—a review of their own staff showed women make 88 cents on every dollar for a man.

*Employees are often paid what they are based on conditions at the time of the hiring—i.e., depending if it was a bad economy (where leverage favored the employer) or a good one (where the employee had more bargaining power up front).

That’s four criticisms that a perfectly reasonable person can have. However, none would dissuade me from supporting the bill and here’s why…

*The first reason is the strongest criticism, but it can be rectified with either an amendment or more precise language. The concern is to ensure that job performance can be used as a defense by the employer. That doesn’t fall under education, training and experience. It might fall under the “bona fide factors” criteria, but that leaves judges way too much leeway. Put in job performance as a criteria and this problem is solved.

*Even if the figure is 84-85 cents on the dollar, I don’t know that this would make me feel a lot better if I were a divorced mom raising kids by myself, making $42,000 a year, and watching my male colleague pull down $50K for the same work.

*The Obama White House’s performance is proof of their own unwillingness to live up to their own standards and for which they deserve political heat, but it’s not an argument against the bill itself. And while Obama is being at least a little bit hypocritical here, even this isn’t on a par with Al Gore flying a gas-guzzling jet while he preaches conservation to everyone else. Either way, it’s an argument about Barack Obama, not the Paycheck Fairness Act.

*I think the arguments I have made to this point could be easily supported by conservatives, if only the case is separated from the polarizing personality of Obama and the obvious fact that his party is pushing this as a midterm election issue, rather than out of real conviction (because if it was real conviction they would have pushed it a long time ago, not when they’re looking at a November meltdown).

But the fourth point is different, and here I suspect I will part company with conservatives on purely ideological grounds. I could frankly care less what the market conditions are at the time of employment. The job is the job and if it’s worth $50,000 a year than pay the person $50,000 a year. The political Right has taken free market rhetoric and ideas to an extreme and this is another example.

The market, at least in a good society, allows for individual initative, for people to move up and to have hard work rewarded. The market, in a bad society, rewards scumbags who exploit their position, regardless of the hardship it inflicts upon others. Reasonable regulation is necessary to keep the market at the service of the good, which is why even Ronald Reagan never advocated getting rid of government regulation entirely, but to trim back where it gotten excessive.

The Paycheck Fairness Act, with a few minor tweaks, is not excessive and places the market at the service of good ideals. Congressional Republicans should pass the bill, and then feel perfectly free to pound the president of the United States for not living up to the very ideals he proposed for everyone else.

03/30/2014

What is the correct response of the United States to Vladimir Putin’s aggressiveness in Russia? I’ve been turning thoughts over in my mind, and have watched the panel discussions on Chris Wallace’s Sunday morning show on Fox, and am still ambivalent. Here are a few thoughts…

*I don’t want any part of committing troops. I agree with a comment President Obama made earlier this week when he said that Russia is a regional superpower. The implication, which I agree with, is that this means Russia is not a direct threat to the survival of the United States. And that is ultimately the bottom line.

*But there are other facets of this where I think the president is being naïve. Russia is only a regional superpower right now, but what if they keep moving, and then formulate a stronger alliance with China, who happens to own a large chunk of the U.S. debt? Suddenly it’s a whole new ballgame and Obama has to be thinking ahead of the curve, not along with it.

*The moral implications are troubling. What if the people of Ukraine and Georgia don’t want to be annexed by Russia (and I presume they don’t). Does the United States have any obligation to help? Remember, an obligation to help presupposes the ability to do.

One side of this says the U.S. can easily send military aid—not troops, but weapons and intel. I’m sympathetic to this, as it revives the old Reagan Doctrine, wherein the United States provided aid to countries that wanted to fight off Soviet Communism.

But the flip side goes back to the possibility of a Russia-China alliance, and that the United States might be more vulnerable than we realize. In short, it might not be prudent to go traipsing all over the world and intervening, even for a good cause. The Catholic Church’s teaching on Just War doctrine requires that both—morality and prudence—be present for a cause to be truly just.

*I know the big push is for economic sanctions, but you’re going to have a hard time selling me on the idea that Western Europe will go along with anything significant, at least for any real length of time. These are governments more focused on their trade relationships. They couldn’t even be persuaded to risk their contracts in Iraq for the sake of stronger sanctions. What makes us think they’ll resist in Russia?

This has big-picture implications, because the United States has been locked, for far too long, into Cold War thinking regarding our “European allies.” How strong of allies are they? And in the short-term, if the continent right on Russia’s west border doesn’t want to go all in to stop Putin, why should the United States care? We’re the ones with a couple oceans between us and Russia.

My view is that we focus on the long-term threats. The first is the size of our debt, which leaves us under partial control by China, and therefore to an alliance with Russia. This is the internal problem that’s sapping us, and what’s true of individuals is also true of nations—our biggest threats come from inside.

The second area to focus on is start asking some serious questions about how far United States’ influence must extend and what the interests we’re truly willing to sacrifice for are. For Republicans, this means, moving past the notion that we’re going to use our might to spread democracy through the world. For the Democrats, it means accepting that we might need to tell Western Europe they need to handle their own security—and that means European audiences might no longer greet the American president like a rock star.

Cut the debt, reassess our interests and be willing to tick some people off to sharpen our foreign policy focus. At a certain point, what will be will be, and we can’t do everything.

03/16/2014

If there’s anything the Democratic Party should be good for—even in its phase of post-1968 capture by the Secular Left—it should be standing up for American jobs. Organized labor is still a vital part of the Democratic coalition, and as such, it would be logical to think you could count on a Democratic Administration to resist the push for increased global free trade.

It would be logical, but logic rarely plays any role in politics. We’re on the two-year anniversary of the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement, and Common Dreams reports that the usual results of these deals are well underway—exports from the U.S. are down, imports from Korea are up, and that in turn means the “giant sucking sound”, to borrow the famous phrase of Ross Perot in the 1992 presidential campaign is again in force.

Why would anyone be surprised at these results? They’re the same results that happened when the U.S. cut a trade deal with Mexico in the early 1990s. History is repeating itself in another way—the Clinton Administration was so inspired by the failure of free trade with Mexico that they decided to expand it globally. Obama’s White House is apparently so enthralled with the dismal early returns of the Korean trade pact that they want to expand it across the Pacific Rim.

Lest one think this is all about attacking the Democrats, let’s be clear—George W. Bush was no better, nor was his father. Congressional Democrats—most prominently those with Secular Left outlooks—tend to be far better on this particular topic than do Tea Party Republicans.

But, from the perspective of Blue Dog Reaganite, if Democratic presidential administrations are going to be consistently wrong on this topic, if congressional critics are going to be a minority, then I have very little reason left to be interested in what the modern Democratic Party has to offer.

Every time this party has to choose between its suburban interests and its workers in manufacturing industries—choices that come up most prominently in debates on free trade and the environment—the Democratic Party consistently makes the wrong choice.

This does not necessarily make the Democrats different than corporate Republicans, who make no pretense about being interested in the plight of the average working person. But this is the area where the Democrats are supposed to differentiate themselves. Instead all they do is talk.

Democratic duplicity to the working man was captured when then-candidate Obama was running in the Ohio primary of 2008. To distinguish himself from Hillary Clinton, Obama criticized the results of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and promised to revisit the misguided deal if he was elected. One day later, Obama’s people were reported to be on the phone with Canada ensuring the Canadians that it was all just rhetoric.

Rhetoric indeed. It begs the question of whether the Democratic Party really stands for the average working person anymore, or if all they’ll really go the mat on is free abortions for everyone. Because the U.S.-Korean trade failure and its promised expansion is just another example of an Administration that only has the words down pat, not the actions.

03/10/2014

There’s some currently some debate going on in the Catholic Church regarding whether people who are divorced and have remarried without obtaining a Church annulment should receive Holy Communion. I bring this topic up in this forum because it goes to what I am going to term some psychological pushing that creates similar internal pressures as to what I often feel in politics. Let me explain.

Before going further, I should clarify something in the previous paragraph. This debate going on within the Church is really just one or two bishops in Germany (notorious for dissent) and the media. It’s not something that’s going to change. But that doesn’t stop it from being a divisive topic—an online poll at a Catholic dating site I write for asked members this question, and responses are pretty well evenly split. Hence, the psychological pressure that I’m going to deal with.

The teaching of the Catholic Church is simple—marriage is forever and if one divorces and remarries without a Church annulment, that one has broken their vow with God and cannot receive Holy Communion. Sounds harsh. Of course that’s why I’ve been italicizing the part about the annulment. I know people outside the Church just see the whole annulment process as another way for the Church to make money and to those of us who have gone through it, it can seem like one long display of jumping through hoops. But it’s really not.

A Catholic who submits a broken marriage to the review of the annulment tribunal—as I have done—is asking for the Church to consider that the marriage was simply wrong from the beginning. It’s not a case of someone quitting or leaving because their spouse left the cap off the toothpaste for the gazillionth day in a row (to quote a line from the great 1980s sitcom Cheers). And that if it was wrong for the beginning, the contract be null and void.

This is a principle accepted in the legal realm—if, for example, there was fraud, or someone was coerced into signing a contract, then the commitments undertaken in that contract are rendered null. The Catholic Church has several grounds on which one can appeal for an annulment and if the case meets those grounds then one is free to contract another marriage within the Church and receive Holy Communion. We should also note that if one is simply divorced and never remarries, they can go on receiving Holy Communion. It’s the remarriage when the existing marital covenant has yet to be annulled that is the sticking point.

I agree with the Catholic Church’s teaching and practice on this matter, which is the reason that on the day my divorce was finalized, I drove the Archdiocesan office and filed the paperwork to have the annulment process start. I wanted to be free to marry again with a clean conscience, and at the very least, I wanted to know whether my failed marriage had been doomed from the outset. It was.

So what are these pressures I’m referring to? My view of this gets me the classification of “conservative Catholic”. And while political labels are woefully inadequate in describing a 2,000-year-old Church, I suppose its close enough.

Yet there were times in this process when I felt that others who would certainly get the label of conservative Catholic seemed a little on the judgmental side. I can think of three examples off the top of my head—maybe it was something that was said, maybe it was the person who suddenly lost touch with me, maybe it was something I saw written online. The underlying premise was simple—You weren’t man enough. You didn’t take up the Cross. You need to mend your ways. This was never the view of anyone who mattered in the decision-making process within Holy Mother Church herself, but it was a pressure I most definitely felt.

It’s not as though there weren’t others prepared to offer support though—there’s an entire culture out there insisting that the answer to the pain of divorce is to just jump right into the next relationship, get involved and if the Church tells you it’s not yet appropriate to remarry, well then, the Church doesn’t know what she’s talking about.

What happens is enough to leave you feeling trapped in the middle—desiring a full Catholic life, while feeling frozen out of it and the only support being offered by those who often have good intentions, but have advice set to lead you down the garden path of whatever works for me.

How does this apply to politics? The same dynamic is at work here, at least with me. I consider myself a part of the Reagan coalition, as evidenced by the title of this blog. I’ve made it clear in various posts that I do separate myself from the conservative mainstream on a variety of issues and points of emphasis that were summarized in this post, The Blue Pool On A Patch Of Red(it sounds like it should be the title of a crime drama episode)Those issues revolve around labor and economic populist themes.

The pressures within conservatism, particularly one that is embracing more of a hard-core libertarian bent, can pound on me politically in the same way that the cold approach of some in the Church can do it in questions of faith. And just like in matters of faith, there are plenty of left-wing political movements ready to offer aid and comfort to a pro-labor voter—but at the cost of selling out the unborn, of embracing same-sex relationships as normative. To say nothing of issues like defense and judicial nominations, which are not matters of faith, but where my opinion trends conservative.

It’s easy enough to be a Catholic, no matter what. Well, maybe simple is the right word, rather than easy. Just live a sacramental life (Mass & confession), go pick up a Catechism (or read it online) and live according to the Church’s moral precepts. No outside input from any movement is necessary.

Politically, it’s a tougher call. I find myself wondering whether the Reagan coalition is finally disappearing, the Republicans ready to fully return to their corporate roots and conservatives ready to turn the atheist libertarian Ayn Rand into their new idol. Unlike the Catholic Church, no political party has had a Messiah promise that the gates of hell will never prevail against it (maybe some self-proclaimed messiahs, but none with the power to make the promise stick).

I think the old Reagan coalition is still there and just needs the right leader, but I could be wrong. After all, I also think the Democratic Party could see the pro-life movement get a foothold in it, and I thought the Washington Redskins would win the Super Bowl. Being wrong isn’t new to me.

What I do know is this—I want to live a fully Catholic life. And I want my spot in the Reagan coalition, as a modern-day example of the old-style Reagan Democrats. As one who has seen a marriage annulled and on the less serious matters of politics, as one who is pro-labor, there are a lot of temptations to move outside those boundaries. But I’m convinced going outside the boundaries of the Catholic Church will never work, and I doubt going outside the Reagan coalition will.

I know this post kind of meandered a bit. If you did identify with any of this—particularly if you’re a Catholic who has gone through the pain of divorce and is looking for help from a place that won’t confuse compassion with enabling, I highly suggest reaching out to Lisa Duffy, who has twenty years’ experience following her own divorce/annulment in working with other Catholics. If you’re a Reagan Democrat looking to stay at home in the red zone…well, I don’t know what to tell you. Just continue dropping by this blog and maybe we’ll figure it out together.

03/02/2014

The state of Arizona was the latest front in the battle between secular left-wing political movements and religious freedom advocates this week, and the secular left won a temporary victory. Governor Jan Brewer vetoed a bill that was perceived to allow businesses the freedom to refuse service to whomever they wanted—and in this context, that pertained to homosexuals.

I’ve italicized the phrase above, because that was how I perceived the debate and I suspect how about 99 percent of the public perceived the debate. Then I read this article in The Christian Post. According to CP, and they appear to have done their homework, current law already provides Arizona business owners ample freedom to choose who they want to serve. CP, which appears sympathetic to conservative backers of the bill, implies that it might be easier for gays to sue a business for non-service under current law than under the vetoed legislation.

All of which leaves me to wonder what all the fuss was about. If current law makes it harder for a gay couple to sue a photographer who didn’t want to service their wedding, why was the gay rights movement so opposed to the new law? And why are Catholics, and other Protestant brethren, seeing the veto as an impending sign of the loss of religious liberty? I wish I could tell you.

So why don’t we take a step back and look at what we all perceived the debate to be about—which is religious freedom in the public square—since that’s the topic that’s working up all the emotional hot buttons.

Before going further, I almost feel guilty about devoting yet another post to the question of gay rights vis-à-vis the Catholic Church, and other believing Protestant communities. I really didn’t start this blog with the intention of it turning into a gay rights-all-the-time commentary, but this is a topic that has been on mind more.

One of the reasons the topic is on my mind is obvious, and it’s the gay rights movement can’t stop shoving it in my face. If I visit ESPN I’m constantly hearing how Michael Sam was treated at the NFL draft combine or that Jason Collins signed a 10-day contract to play for the Brooklyn Nets. If I go to my Yahoo account to check my e-mail, the Yahoo home page appears to be Gay Rights Central, with some piece of news as the top story every day. For a movement that says that want to be left alone, they certainly make shove their values down everyone’s throat.

But there’s other reasons this topic is on my mind, and it’s that I feel genuinely whipsawed by the current political and cultural climate. I’ve made my stance on homosexual acts and marriage very clear—by the standards of America today, I am a homophobe. Which simply means I think marriage is between a man and a woman and the biology of the human body makes it clear that men and women were made to fit together in a way same-sex relationships were not. Personally, I find that a fairly unremarkable statement, but it doesn’t take much to draw the homophobe label.

However…I am disturbed by what I see as a tendency among socially traditional Catholics (I won’t comment on Protestants since I’m not familiar with the nuances of debate within these communities, nor the teaching of each denomination) to single out homosexuality for harsher standards than the array of other sexual activity we believe to be gravely sinful (unmarried sex, cohabitation, contraception).

As an example, last spring I wrote on a conservative Catholic website that I disagreed with a comment made by a speaker at Johns Hopkins that homosexuality led to the logical next step of bestiality. The editor of the site rebuked me for it.

Now I believe that sin is a tricky devil (literally) and that once you step into one sin it can lead into a lot of others you might not intend. But that’s as true about alcohol abuse, watching porn, gambling addiction, and any other sexual sins straight people commit as it is about homosexuality. Start down that garden path and who knows where it ends up—but that’s not a reason to single out homosexuality in particular.

If you’re a practicing Catholic and believe in all the Church teaches, singling out gays for a higher standard can be easy because in all likelihood there aren’t any in our immediate social circle (at least that we know of), while most of us do regularly interact with, and consider friends, people who may live with their significant other or believe in artificial birth control.

But singling those who commit the sin of homosexual acts out for a higher standard violates Catholic teaching on this very topic, which specifically says that “unjust discrimination” against gays should be rooted out. Unmarried sex is grave sin, as sure as homosexuality is.

And in that’s aspect of Catholic moral teaching that leaves me often troubled on the topic today. What is “unjust discrimination?” To secular liberals, the answer is easy—gay couples should have the same rights as straight ones. But for a Catholic, we’re going to understand that teaching in the context of all that comes before it, which include the inherent unnaturalness of homosexual acts and of same-sex marriage.

If a Catholic leader has really come out with a complete explanation of how the prohibition against “unjust discrimination” might be applied, I have missed it. Perhaps that’s going to be a part of the Church’s future. Or perhaps, given its political overtones, it’s going to be left for the laity to apply using our own private judgment. I don’t know.

What I would like to point out to those who also believe in the Catholic Church, is that this facet of moral teaching—the need to eliminate “unjust discrimination” is not some optional part of Catholicism. We can’t ignore it because it might create some uncomfortable moments of intersection with the gay rights movement and against the Protestant Right. Let’s take some hypothetical examples of how this might play out in the public square….

*If a man owns a gas station just off the freeway (a freeway quite obviously paid for by public tax dollars), should he have the right to refuse service to a gay couple based on religious beliefs? I say no. The entire public paid for the freeway that made the man’s business successful and the entire public should be able to be served by it.

Furthermore, what if it’s a 10-degree night, the tank is on empty, and the next gas station isn’t for another fifty miles (hardly an unusual circumstance)? To refuse service would be akin to telling the gay couple to risk hypothermia or worse. There’s nothing in Catholic doctrine that justifies this, and it’s fully appropriate for it to be not just a matter of private charity, but public law that compels the gas station to serve all who come.

*Let’s move to the next rung down, and say someone opens a pizza joint. A gay couple comes in on a Friday night. Should the owner be able to refuse service? The situation is certainly not as grave as the example above, but I’m inclined again to say that if you open to serve the public, then serve the public. If you’re serving couples that contracept, if you’re serving people that live together, don’t say it’s a violation of your religious freedom because you served a homosexual couple.

Because here again, your pizza business can succeed because of roads and sidewalks that will built and paid for by everyone. There’s no movement suggesting that gays get a break on the taxes that pay for this, so it’s fair that they benefit from the services the business provides.

But now let’s move to some questions where I believe the benefit of the doubt should move to the religious freedom of the business owner. The most prominent examples in the news are cases of gay couples wanting a photographer or baker to be a vendor for their wedding. In this case, I think the owner should have the right to say no.

I realize these businesses still benefit from sidewalks and roads in the same way the pizza restaurant does, but I think there’s also a couple big differences. The first is in the gravity of what the owner is being asked to be a party to. In the example above he was only asked to serve people food. In this new case, he’s being asked to assent to a wedding, something that he (and I) believe to be fundamentally immoral.

Furthermore, there is the question of just how much inconvenience the customer is suffering. Refusing a gay couple at a restaurant subjects them to having a find a new place to eat on immediate notice. It might not be the most serious problem in the world, but it’s a hassle. A photographer or baker refusing service just means the couple goes to the next phone number down in the Yellow Pages.

The court system in the United States has consistently weighed these sorts of competing factors when different rights start clashing. I would argue that in the case of the baker and photographer, the inconvenience suffered by the customer does not outweigh the violation of religious freedom incurred by the business owner.

*Finally, let’s say the photographer or baker work out of their house. As far as I’m concerned, they can serve exclusively who they want and for whatever reason. The only rationale for mandating that any business serve anyone and everyone is when they enter the public square. If the only way you have entered the public square is through a website and a phone listing, that’s so minimal that you can’t possibly justify any reduction in religious freedom.

I would submit these four cases as test examples for everyone to think their way through. On polar opposites, you have the case of the gas station owner and the photographer working out of the house. In the middle, you have the pizza shop owner and the photographer/baker working in a public place. You have two examples falling on each side of the line.

Wherever you think, let me use this tiny space on the web though, to appeal to the leaders of our Church to take on the tough challenge of asking what “unjust discrimination” against gays is, in the Catholic sense of the term, and how we might root it out. Because right now, we’re just swimming on our own trying to figure it out.

02/25/2014

I signed up for ObamaCare. There, I said it. I’m out of the closet. As a freelance writer, I qualified for a tax credit on the federal exchange, and that tax credit can be applied to reduce one’s monthly premium.

So does this make me a leech on honest hardworking taxpayers? That’s already been said—and by friendly relatives no less. On the flip side, do I now have an obligation to say that the Affordable Care Act is a wonderful thing?

Let’s address the first point first, since it’s what cuts closest to the bone. Does getting a tax credit for health insurance make one a “taker”, to use the current conservative paradigm of “makers and takers.”

That’s a reasonable point. After all, if you start with your basic tax rate as the obligation a person has for paying for the government in a civil society, than any special reduction in that rate could be seen as “taking.”

But if we’re going to make that point, then it has to apply across the board and let’s start with a couple tax breaks that will hit close to home with a lot of people—mortgage interest and children. Now I don’t own a home and I don’t have kids, but I support the tax breaks, both of which are significant, that others get in these two areas. Why? Because I believe home ownership and children are good things—not just for those that have them, but for society as a whole.

Those who claim these deductions probably don’t think of themselves as “takers”—and neither do I—but if you’re going to call me a “taker” for having a tax break on health insurance, then you’ve certainly opened up the discussion to go down that road.

What about the flip side? Am I now obligated to say my opposition to ObamaCare was completely misguided? I suppose if you think I should reduce serious questions of national policy to simply being about whatever benefits me at a given point, then possibly. But I try not to have such a narrow view of the national interest.

Sorry, I don’t mean to come off overly pious when I say that, but I also know a friend who buys health insurance independently and is just outside (by a few thousand dollars) the threshold for getting the tax credit. People like that are getting whipsawed and we can’t pretend they don’t exist either.

Furthermore, it wasn’t as though as I was an apologist for the old system of health insurance. I recall posting on Facebook, probably around 2009, that asking me to care whether the insurance industry or the government ran health care was like asking me to care whether the Colombo Family or the Gambino Family ran the mafia.

In this analogy I’m akin to a bookmaker on the street who knows he’s kicking a percentage upstairs regardless of who’s in charge. Just tell me what I have to pay and where to send it. If I happen to benefit by how the mob wars play out at a given point in time, so be it, but don’t tell me there’s a grand moral principle at stake.

The fact of the matter I was, to put it bluntly, getting screwed by the old system. My premiums were rated up—drastically—because I had seen a therapist to discuss a failing marriage and it classified me a mental health risk. I guess if I would have talked to my parish priest, it was fine, but going to a therapist was a bridge to far for the insurance industry.

My case is just one of the insurance industry’s many failings in this regard, and one of the least serious. They declined people with pre-existing conditions and made coverage unaffordable. They made maternity coverage expensive--I recall when I sold health insurance back in the mid-1990s and sole proprietors having to do without maternity, even if they were going to have kids, because the rider was too expensive.

And the reality is that Republicans did very little (if anything) to speak out against this. At the grass-roots, most every Republican I know freely acknowledged the insurance industry was screwing things up, but when it came to elected officials, it was Democrats who consistently took the lead on the topic. Including—in fact most prominently—Democrats that I wouldn’t vote for in a million years, ranging from the late Teddy Kennedy to Nancy Pelosi to President Obama himself.

The Republican Party in general and the conservative movement in particular have a lot they can offer the health care debate, in bringing free market principles to bear in reducing costs. But to date, their political class has been uninterested in making those arguments, except as a defensive measure, and focused their attention on lamenting those lazy 47 percenters. A group of which I am one. And by the same standards that apply to me, apparently a lot of other people are as well.

02/14/2014

What do you think of Michael Sam? That’s the question that’s posed to sports fans, of which I am one, regarding the announcement by the Missouri defensive end, preparing to enter the NFL draft this spring, that he is gay. Sam, who won Defensive Player of the Year in the SEC, will almost certainly be the first openly gay player in the NFL next fall.

So what do I think of Michael Sam? I suppose the place to begin is to cite what the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which I believe to be infallible on faith and morals, protected by the Holy Spirit from error, says on the subject of homosexuality. Here are the relevant passages…

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2357 Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex. It has taken a great variety of forms through the centuries and in different cultures. Its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained. Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity [Cf. Gen 19:1-29; Rom 1:24-27; 1 Cor 6:10; 1 Tim 1:10], tradition has always declared that "homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered."[Cf.

They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.

2358 The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. They do not choose their homosexual condition; for most of them it is a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God's will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord's Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition.

2359 Homosexual persons are called to chastity. By the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection.

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Now, here are nine points on how I see that pertaining to Michael Sam…

*The first and most important is this—why do people really think that I, or the vast majority of opponents of same-sex marriage, really care about Michael Sam’s sexual practices? I mean seriously? Professional sports—for that matter, life itself—is filled with people who do things that contradict the teachings of the Catholic Church, and that’s a list that includes myself all too frequently. Really, I have better things to worry about, and if my favorite NFL team, the Washington Redskins, thinks Sam can help them win, then draft him.

*I suspect the real meaning behind the question, “what do you think of Michael Sam”, is code for “what do you think of homosexual acts?" I think they’re wrong.

*The Church teaching also says homosexuals should not be subject to any unjust discrimination. Stopping Michael Sam from playing football—or even creating an environment where he has to walk on eggshells or fear bullying—would, in my view, constitute unjust discrimination. Let him play.

*Picking up on the above point, as Catholics, we also don’t believe in artificial birth control or unmarried sex, but we don’t insist that those who violate these teachings—even willfully and defiantly—not have the opportunity to advance in their chosen field. It would be unjust to hold gays to a higher standard.

*Gay rights activists are very aggressive in linking their cause to the civil rights movements for African-Americans. I don’t agree. Race is not sexual preference. The latter requires specific acts to consummate, and even at that, the acts are (or should be) private. The color of a person’s skin is quite different. The gay rights-civil rights linkage is convenient, but not accurate.

*Sam’s coming out is the second major coming out of an NFL athlete in the last three years. The other was Tim Tebow, who came out of a different kind of closet. I don’t mean that Tebow said he was a Christian—that’s common enough. I mean that Tebow went a step further and said he was a virgin. Even the slightest amount of time around a sports team tells you there are almost certainly fewer virgins than gays.

*Therefore, if you don’t treat Sam and Tebow the same, you are being inconsistent and unfair. For the record, while I think Tebow’s choices are admirable, I was always queasy when he came out as a virgin. It fell into the “that’s more than I needed to know” category. But anyone that is celebrating Sam, after sitting in grudging silence or opposition to Tebow has a serious deficiency in basic fairness.

*Gay rights activists are also being very aggressive about saying that they are on the right side of history. Time will tell, but we do have one test case to go by. Perhaps no great Empire in history was more tolerant of a wide variety of sexual practice than the Roman Empire. At the same time, the Catholic Church stood as firm as ever that there was one right way to do things. Just out of curiosity, did the Empire or the Church last longer?

*Finally, to rebuke the very point I just made, why should the verdict of history even matter? If you really think that anybody four centuries from now is going to remember what any of us thought, get over yourself. Worrying about what history will say is vain, and suggests worrying more about what people think of you than about what is right. If you truly believe homosexual practice is right, then whether you’re on the “right side of history” shouldn’t matter. And if you think, deep down, that there is something just a little unnatural about it all, don’t worry—none of us are important enough for history to condemn or praise. Just do what you think is right.

12/27/2013

The Blue Dog Reaganite blog was founded back in 2009, and it’s gone through a couple distinct movements, the first of which ended in early 2010 when Republican senatorial candidate Scott Brown won a special election to fill the seat of the late Teddy Kennedy in Massachusetts.

The blog took a break that ended up lasting until early 2012, I ended up doing some blogging in that election year for a conservative Catholic organization, and came back here in the spring of 2013. Another break is ahead.

I write this blog to sort out my conflicted thoughts on the current political landscape, where a voter like me, economically populist and socially traditional, has been left out in the cold. Because of my conviction that rights of the unborn trump all other considerations, I vote Republican.

But there’s a big difference between voting Republican—or even conservative—and being either of the above. I’ve long known that I’m not the former, and I’m starting to accept the realization that I might not even be the latter.

A post written on November 13 was a seminal point of the last year, and it was called “The Blue Pool In A Patch Of Red”, where I discussed my Democratic leanings on economic issues. With each post I wrote on these topics, I began to see that it wasn’t just a stray issue here or there where I had some blue in me. There was a definite package of issues, all significant, where my views are far more in the framework of the Democratic Party—even today’s Democratic Party-- than of the GOP.

But the political left wing that finances the party and provides its ground troops has grown increasingly intolerant on topics ranging from abortion to same-sex marriage to religious liberty itself, and there is no way one can form a long-term alliance with them.

I learned this the hard way over a year and a half ago when making an attempt to olive-branch to a liberal activist after a political fight had been picked with me. Olive-branching doesn’t work with people who think they’re ceaselessly correct every time they open their mouth, and to borrow the words of Taylor Swift “We Are Never Getting Back Together.”

Today’s political world may be owned the Daily Kos rackets on the left, the Ayn Rand worshippers on the right with the corporate world bankrolling both parties above them, but I refuse to believe that those of us who still believe in the adage “To thine own self be true,” have only two choices, those being in fall in line or leave the arena.

But let’s think of the arena as a big domed stadium hosting a basketball tournament. There’s one main court in the middle that the TV cameras are focused on, and that’s drawing the biggest crowds. That arena in politics is today’s presidential races and the bulk of the Senate and House campaigns. We may need to leave that arena, and go to a smaller one, where longer-term cultural topics are being discussed and the seeds for a longer-term success are being planted.

The secular left-wing movements, notably militant gay activism, went to the smaller arenas and played their way onto the big stage. We may need to follow suit, of focusing on big-picture questions, getting active in only select political campaigns and draw clear distinctions on whom we give our votes to and whom we give our loyalty and time to.

To make this more specific to the cause of Blue Dog Reaganite, which speaks to the heritage of ethnic Catholics of European lineage, I believe we need to find common cause with African-Americans, Hispanics and other immigrant communities. There are a lot of us who believe in the fusion of economic populism and social traditionalism, but race is effectively used as a wedge issue by the elites of both parties to keep us separate.

One part of this is acknowledging where the heritage of Blue Dog Reaganite has had an unhealthy racial dynamic and it was that topic that drove my recent post on Washington Redskins quarterback, the African-American Robert Griffin III and how he is perceived by the national media, particularly as it relates to his Irish Catholic head coach, Mike Shanahan.

It was a small topic and not one of national consequence, but as I pointed out in this post, cultural change is ultimately driven by all of us making healthy decisions on a lot of small topics.

So where do we go from here, and how long is Blue Dog Reaganite’s next break? I don’t know. I’ll likely start delving more into history, even more so than I have already. One of my regrets from my college years—other than the massive amounts of beer I drank—is that I didn’t major in history, and instead chose political science.

Our political movement needs to take a long view, and the grounding in history will surely help. As to when I’ll be back, I’m not sure. I also would like to write a series of novels dealing with the ethnic Catholic experience in America. In the meantime, the posts written here pretty much cover most issues on the landscape and are all still relevant.

If I don’t see you before then, everyone have a happy and blessed 2014. And if you like sports, I write TheSportsNotebook.com website that covers them all, and there’s no break coming there.